Vegetable Card

I saw this proposal on what I think is the campaign website for the Green Party candidate for Mayor of Paris. To read about it, you'll need to either know French or else trust the whims of Google's automatic translator, but the basic idea, as seen on the card, is to create a generous program along the lines of food stamps here in the U.S. but specifically targeted at the purchase of fresh produce.

In the developed world we're (fortunately) past the point where inability to afford an adequate quantity of calories is a series problem, but instead we've got a serious problem of people getting too fat while simultaneously not getting enough nutrition. This sort of targeted program could help, though so would altering our absurd health- and environment-destroying agricultural subsidies policies. We could even keep subsidizing agriculture to a ridiculous extent but just try to shift to subsidizing healthy stuff instead of corn, beet sugar, corn-bases sugar substitutes, etc.

I like these Paris transportation ideas too.

Comments

This is COMMUNISM, by God! They can have my high-fructose corn syrup when they pry it from my cold, dead-from-massive-coronary-in-my-early-50s, fat fingers!

Posted by James Gary | April 18, 2008 2:03 PM

hallelujah

Posted by lynne howell | April 18, 2008 2:13 PM

There's no way the definition of 'vegetable' would survive our legislative process. These cards would end up buying ketchup, fruit snack, cereal bars and other completely processed foods. How about an 'in season vegetable box' card instead?

Posted by citizen (world) | April 18, 2008 2:26 PM

Isn't France just about on the verge of going broke because of its existing generous social programs and aging population?

Posted by Linus | April 18, 2008 2:46 PM

Isn't France just about on the verge of going broke because of its existing generous social programs and aging population?

No.

Posted by andy | April 18, 2008 3:21 PM

citizen, it does say specifically that the card is for seasonal, fresh fruits and vegetables. Though I take your point. ADM would definitely argue (a)corn is a vegetable; (b) corn syrup is the #2 ingredient in Coke, after water; (c) Coke is thus a vegetable, QED.

Linus, I don't think we're in much of a position to point the "going broke" finger at anyone else, especially when our currency has lost, what, 1/2 its value in relation to the Euro in the last decade. And part of the goal of the card is to improve public health through improving people's diet, which will save money in tons of ways in the medium and long term.

Posted by Pesto | April 18, 2008 3:25 PM

I believe there were amendments to the farm bill that attempted to expand projects like that here, like the Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Program and the Senior Farmers Market Program. I'm not sure if they passed or not, but, at the very least, it is a step in the right direction.

Posted by Raabia | April 18, 2008 3:25 PM

I believe there were amendments to the farm bill that attempted to expand projects like that here, like the Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Program and the Senior Farmers Market Program. I'm not sure if they passed or not, but, at the very least, it is a step in the right direction.

Posted by Raabia | April 18, 2008 3:28 PM

There's no way the definition of 'vegetable' would survive our legislative process. These cards would end up buying ketchup, fruit snack, cereal bars and other completely processed foods.

I laughed because it is so true.

Posted by blah | April 18, 2008 3:31 PM

we've got a serious problem of people getting too fat while simultaneously not getting enough nutrition

Is this actually true? I don't know of any epidemiological data that supports significant instances of malnutrition in the developed world. I think the problem is that the nexus of low cost and pleasant taste tends to be where calorie counts are highest, so the poor tend to chose unhealthy foods when eating for pleasure. The refusal to acknowledge that once basic nutritional needs are met, people treat eating as a recreational activity seems to be interfering with attempts to come up with accurate analysis of the issues surrounding obesity.

Posted by MattXIV | April 18, 2008 3:59 PM

You're right Matt, it's the green party municipal site. But google translation, I'm betting, missed a great nugget from the first paragraph.

It suggests that obesity is out of control in France because a full 10% of the country's population is obese, while 25% is overweight.

BTW, latest US figures have obesity in America at 30%, overweight at 65%.

Posted by zamprelli, Montreal | April 18, 2008 4:49 PM

Even more important since the prices for fresh produce, particularly organic, are going through the roof.

Posted by converse | April 18, 2008 5:11 PM

"And part of the goal of the card is to improve public health through improving people's diet, which will save money in tons of ways in the medium and long term."

If socially engineering a thin society is so important maybe we just starve these poor bloated masses.

I think people in general should eat fewer processed foods and less fast food. But there's just something condescending and hypocritical about a bunch of politicians - many of them overweight themselves not to mention living off the people's money - telling poor people what they can eat.

The best argument against it though (and truth be told I wouldn't mind someone giving me a card for free fruits and vegetables) is practical: a lot of inner city neighborhoods don't have grocery stores with good selections of fruits and vegetables and some don't have them at all.

I'd also question the idea that health care costs would be lower if fat people ate better and lost weight. Smokers tend to be more unhealthy when they're alive but they don't live as long (the biggest chunk of health care costs is for end of life care for the elderly) so they cost about the same overall.

Is this really about public health or liberal puritanism?

Posted by Linus | April 18, 2008 6:51 PM

Well, I guess Jamie Oliver is just a condescending, hypocritical puritan then.

Posted by novakant | April 18, 2008 7:51 PM

If socially engineering a thin society is so important maybe we just starve these poor bloated masses.

You talk as if someone's proposing we pry open people's mouths with crowbars and shovel green peppers down their gullets.

If you want to eat crap, that's your God-given right as a freedom-loving American. If you want to eat better, a program like the one above might be the tipping factor that convinces you to take the plunge. What's so evil about that?

Posted by Jay Andrew Allen | April 18, 2008 8:42 PM

"Well, I guess Jamie Oliver is just a condescending, hypocritical puritan then."

I've made some of the Oliver fellow's recipes; they're good.

But what Oliver is doing (if I'm understanding it correctly) and what the French fellow has in mind aren't the same thing.

The stuff kids eat in American public schools is appalling; in a purely nutritional sense it qualifies for food but not - mostly - in any other sense.

Oliver is apparently trying to improve the quality of food served in British state schools and in doing so improve the quality of life of kids in British state schools.

But just giving the poor more fruits and vegetables may improve their nutritional intake but it doesn't fundamentally improve their quality of life unless they understand how to prepare good, fresh food.

Posted by Linus | April 18, 2008 9:45 PM

"You talk as if someone's proposing we pry open people's mouths with crowbars and shovel green peppers down their gullets."

You see a card that lets people buy fruits and vegetables they might not otherwise be able to afford or buy.

I see a revision to American food stamp policy requiring that a certain portion of food stamps be used to buy fruits and vegetables.

If we're going to go down that road I'd just like to be sure that there are actually places in people's neighborhoods to buy these things.

Posted by Linus | April 18, 2008 10:43 PM

I like it! This will get more people buying veggies, and that alone should help persuade farmers to grow more of them and less of the corn syrup, ideally? I agree with the subsidy point, of course, but this veggie card would help with that situation too, right? A little?

Posted by Phoebe | April 18, 2008 10:54 PM

"There's no way the definition of 'vegetable' would survive our legislative process. These cards would end up buying ketchup, fruit snack, cereal bars and other completely processed foods."

So that's why I have scurvy even after drinking a bottle of ketchup a day! Reagan lied to me!

Posted by Reality Man | April 19, 2008 3:42 AM

I notice it also has one of those nifty PIN chips on it. A little less prone to fraud than our LINK cards in Illinois.

Posted by DBX | April 19, 2008 11:39 AM

Linus, regarding France and social benefits, I suppose they could find a way of going bust if they go on allowing public employees to retire in final salary schemes at age 50. But I don't expect that to last, and in general France's per hour productivity has become very impressive. I guess those long lunch hours (with the emphasis on the plural there :-) and long vacations leave you more productive for the time you work; I know they certainly would me.

Posted by DBX | April 19, 2008 11:47 AM